“He finds himself crossing things out in his journal as if he imagines some future person poring over it in detail, as if he wants the future person to know which ideas he has thought better of.”
-Normal People
I feel like it’s almost a kind of joke at this point, a writer (or wannabe writer, whichever category I fall under) owning an inordinate number of notebooks. I do, I fact, own an inordinate number of notebooks. Some of them are put back in the shelf after only a little use, others are filled to the margins with scribbles and notes and charts. Some I try to use only for writing, some are used for work or trips or journaling, others are hybrid affairs, with notes about wine orders and table settings beside haikus and paragraphs of novels written because I am not near computers. That’s before we get to things written on notepads, in server booklets, on random scraps of paper left in my desk.
That being not near computers thing is one of the main reasons I always try to have a notebook on hand (though my note app has seen its fair share of use, it has its detractions, as I will state later). Notebooks, even the bulkier ones, have the advantage of mobility and accessibility, as well as general acceptance? We’ll call it that. What I mean is that it’s a little better to take out a notebook and write something down than bringing out my whole laptop or even sometimes my phone. But having it on hand, ready to go at a moment’s notice, and forever written down in ink (at some point I will rail against the pencil) is lifesaving for the ideas you always have on the go.
My father likes to tell a story to me about how when struck by inspiration, Billy Joel once left a business meeting to write a song. Creativity is like that sometimes, and I fully sympathize with that sentiment. Sometimes there are lines, ideas, scenes that pop into one’s head a la Harry Potter (as that story goes he just walked into Rowling’s brain). It’s like holding mercury, though. With my mind especially, I have a hard enough time remembering actual people’s names, let alone imagined moments. Maybe the two are linked…
But having the ability to write it down, as physically writing does improve memory, means I have it there on the page. I can go back and reference it, assuming I can read my own handwriting.
Handwriting is another matter entirely, both an plus and a minus to notebooks. I legitimately don’t think that I can physically keep up with some of the more exciting ideas I have sometimes, and that means my handwriting can get… unique. My coworkers would say terrible, it’s fine. But the brain works differently writing by hand instead of typing. I can type a lot faster than I can write, and while that’s good for getting ideas onto a page, having to handwrite forces me to really slow down and think.
I try to write most of my poetry by hand for that reason. It’s meditative, everything from the lines forming on the page to the ink drying. Slow, steady, and thoughtful. The same process applied to a story makes for some of the deepest dialogue, the most picturesque scenes. The benefits of writing by hand abound, even if my penmanship can’t quite keep up. Having notebooks around, bursting from the walls and shelves, helps make sure that whenever the need arises, I can get my ideas down, and sometimes better than typing them up or tapping them into a notes app.
The variety is fun, too. Little slips of paper from server books or random notepads I’ve collected have the vibes of being a creative madman or detective slowly collecting pieces of stories together, figuring it out. Heavier, fancier notebooks offer their weight to the metaphorical weight of the story, the sense of importance and respect due to any creative act. My day to day notebooks (yes, Moleskines…) offer versatility and flexibility (sometimes literally).
But I haven’t stopped there. Lately I’ve been buying notebooks with artistic covers because inspiration is everywhere and having a visual aesthetic applied to writing benefits everyone. I envy people who have the talent and put in the work to succeed in visual mediums. I was never very good at drawing, even though I was in honors art in middle school (high point of my artistic career). But having a piece of something so gripping, so inspiring, with which to further my own skills (relative though they may be) and passion as a writer only helps. In New York I bought A Good Company notebook with pages and a cover made of stone, apparently? I use it now to keep final drafts of poems on hand in one safe place, although their actual writing and editing takes place over the vast number of other notebooks I’ve acquired and will keep acquiring.
Because they do fill up, eventually. They fill with ideas and dreams and inspiration. They will with words. Not all of them turn into anything, or become stories or poems I share, but they exist. I get to write them. If they’re in a notebook, I get to hold them, too, these things I’ve created. It’s that last, yet unspoken thing I love about notebooks, I think. That physicality.
A reminder in my hand that ideas can become reality.